Mexico’s youth team raise the alarms after double defeats on Monday

Mexico’s youth teams had a disastrous Monday when both the U-20 and the U-22 teams lost on their respective European tours. The U-20 team had a game to forget when they lost by a score of 4-0 to the Czech Republic. Later on, it was the turn of the U22 team who lost their second game in Marbella when they fell 2-1 against Northern Ireland.

Early in the day, Mexico’s U-20 team played in Alicante, Spain against the Czech Republic. Mexico had arrived after narrowly losing 3-2 in Amsterdam against the home team. Here, Mexico suffered the same fate, losing 4-0 against the Czechs after trailing 1-0 at the half. According to reports, coach Diego Ramirez made lots of changes to his team, but the restful was nonetheless still surprising, especially after notching a much better result in a more hostile environment than the neutral Alicante.

Later on that day, the Mexico U-22s played their second game in Marbella, Spain. Mexico had tied 0-0 against Scotland on Friday in the same city and now faced a Northern Ireland side. Mexico lost by a score of 2-1, with Pablo Lopez scoring for Mexico while David Parkinson and Shayne Lavery scored for Northern Ireland. According to reports, it was an even game, but Mexico went down to 10 men in the 70th minute, something which affected the score as the second Northern Ireland goal came in the 86th minute.

Both results are worrisome for Mexico. While the loss to Northern Ireland is a bad result for the U-22 team coached by Jaime Lozano, that team still has a long way to go as Olympic qualifiers aren’t until much later and the team still has a summer of competition to go. Meanwhile, the U-20 is set to make their U-20 World Cup debut on May 23, which is less than two months away. Though the news that coach Diego Ramirez is still making changes could be a good explanation for the negative results, it’s not a good sign that he is doing this just weeks away from a major tournament, especially ahead of a group many call the “group of death”. It seems Ramirez has his work cut out for him.